Personalized nutrition advisor

Abstract

The instant invention describes various computer program products and methods of using the same in order to provide personalized nutritional advice to end users.

The invention claimed is: 
     
       1. A method for providing personalized nutritional advice to a subject, the method comprising:
 A) obtaining a definition of the subject's medical condition, 
 B) generating a query for a database for an impact of particular foods and nutrients on the defined medical condition based upon the subject's medical condition wherein the database is stored in a computer system and includes:
 i) a problem table comprising records identifying a plurality of health conditions by which the subject's medical condition is defined wherein the query lists problems unique to the subject, 
 ii) an item table comprising an item records for each different food items and nutrients therein, 
 iii) a content table that, for each food in said item table, identifies relevant nutrients for the food item and a known nutritional value for that nutrient in the food item, wherein each record in the content table includes a content factor of a value that indicates upon a level of presences of a particular nutrient in the food item, 
 iv) an anti-pro table that determines whether one item record in each pair works against or enhances the other item record in each pair of the food item, 
 v) a remedy table derived from said problem, content and anti-pro tables and based upon nutritional and medical information, wherein each record in said remedy table identifies one problem from said problem table and for that one problem, information from each relevant content table record from said content table and a factor from said anti-pro table that defines the impact of the food item on the corresponding problem, 
 wherein the each remedy table record has a positive or negative value if the item is good or bad, respectively, for the subject's medical condition and have a value that quantifies how good or bad the item will be for the subject's medical condition, 
 wherein the factor in each record of the anti-pro table has a positive or negative numerical value depending upon whether one item in the pair enhances or detracts from the efficacy of the other item in the pair, and 
 C) processing the query in the computer system by: 
 i) generating a subject problem list containing those records from the problem table that define the subject's medical condition, and 
 ii) generating a subject remedy list of records from the remedy table that corresponds to all the item records that are relevant to the problems in the subject problem list, and 
 D) generating in the computer system a subject report that lists foods based upon the information in the subject problem list and the subject remedy list that quantifies the impact of different foods and nutrients on the subject's problem list based upon the relationship factors in the remedy list, the subject report defining the impact that the listed foods will have on the problems in the subject problem list. 
 
 
     
     
       2. A method as recited in  claim 1  wherein the item table further includes records related to illnesses, health conditions, health risks and health goals. 
     
     
       3. A method as recited in  claim 1  additionally including a group table in the database that maintains information about relationships that exist between the records in the item table. 
     
     
       4. A method as recited in  claim 1  wherein the item table additionally includes item records for life style considerations and each record in the item table is assigned to one of a plurality of categories.